the absence of you can fill a room
by starbursts and kisses
Summary: In the end, it is Jon who brings them closer together.


**AN:** Hiiiii guys, look who's still alive lol. New year, new me! (Oh, who am I kidding)

Just to warn you, there's literally no plot here. Like, at all. This is just a warm-up exercise for me because I haven't written anything in ages. So if you came here looking for something substantial, well whoops. Go back, go back!

But having said that, feel free to poke at all the major plot holes you can find, assuming I fool you into thinking there's a plot lmao.

* * *

It should have bothered Aegon that there were women at Castle Black. It went against everything Jon Connington had ever told him about the Night's Watch. There are rapists and thieves and bastards at the Wall, the memory of Jon's voice echoed in his head, but if you could somehow win them over to our cause without seemingly making them break their vows of impartiality, then you'd be one step closer to getting the Iron Throne.

Of course, Jon had also told him that he would be proclaimed King one day and that he would stand by his side what that moment arrived, but clearly _that_ had not happened and, short of bringing up Jon's ghost by means both magical and forbidden, it never would.

The Long Winter was over, as was the war, though the two had often been used so interchangeably in Aegon's mind that he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons had died saving them from the Others, while Jon Connington had died trying to save him.

All his life Aegon had been told that he was a prince, that he was destined for greatness, that he would save Westeros from the Usurper and seek justice for what they did to his family. But now he was the only dragon left in the world, and the home that he had longed for all his life was nothing but a charred and rotting wasteland, populated by people with gaunt faces and eyes that spoke of nothing but war.

He had fought and bled his way to come home, only to find out that he had been too late.

He was a king without a kingdom.

Aegon closed his eyes. He could almost taste the ashes in his mouth.

There was a part of him that ached when he thought about those things. Things like what could have been and what should have been. Things like family and Daenerys and dragons and saving the world. But the world had already been saved, a bitter part of Aegon reminded himself. There was nothing left for him to do now but scrape up the remains and wish for the best. And amidst all that, hope.

Hope led him to the top of a huge, round tower overlooking the gate and the foot of the wooden stair leading up the Wall. The place had a neglected feel to it, as though it had been left undisturbed for years, maybe even centuries, until Aegon came trampling in with his army and his claims and his golden promises and his hopes. Hope was a rare and fragile thing, this high up North, and Aegon was starting to wonder how long his supply was going to last.

"Shouldn't you be at King's Landing, reclaiming what is rightfully yours with fire and blood? The Wall is no place for a king."

The owner of the voice belonged to a wildling woman standing at the far side of the room, her body slanted sideways as though poised for a fight. Her face was blank and carefully composed, but there was something dangerous about the curve of her cheekbones and the harsh line of her eyebrows. Impossible though it might seem, she looked far more feral than the direwolf crouching by her side.

Aegon was then filled with a sudden certainty that asking the lady for her name was pointless. The creature whose fur her fingers had been stroking so tenderly sealed her identity faster than if the woman had announced herself to him instead. Against all odds, Aegon felt the familiar beginnings of hope stir in his chest.

"In the Free Cities," he began, "there were rumours of a third Targaryen hidden in the cold walls of the North. They said he had a wolf's face but when he bled, he bled dragon blood. They said he joined forces with the Mother of Dragons and together they rid the world of wights and drove back the darkness until the realm was bathed once more in light."

Something like pain crossed the Stark girl's face, but it was gone as swiftly as he had seen it until Aegon was left thinking that he had merely imagined it. "You are talking about my brother Jon," she said. Even her voice sounded rough, wild like the full moon, unbridled like the waves crashing against the cliff stones on a stormy day.

"Yes," Aegon replied, bracing himself for more.

"My brother is dead," the girl stated. Aegon could not help but notice how many times she had said the word brother. The word dripped of intention.

"I have also heard," Aegon added, more slowly this time, "that he had already died once and been brought back to life."

Grey eyes flashed. Somewhere inside the room, a match was struck. "This time, he stayed dead."

Aegon sucked in a breath. He would not, could not, allow himself to give in to despair. "Are you certain?"

"Would you like me to dig up his bones for you as proof?" Her voice was barely a whisper, but the sharp sting of her words was unmistakable. "Or perhaps you'd like me to narrate the exact manner by which he died? What would you like to hear first? How the Night King's blade pierced him in the chest twice, cutting through muscle and armour? How he'd howled and screamed Dany's name until the entire world was ravaged in flames –"

"Gods, stop." Aegon exhaled heavily through his nose and swept his hair away from his face, both habits speaking of equal parts horror and weary resignation. Then, when he felt like he had found his voice again, he said, "I'm sorry. I truly, truly am. It was cruel of me to ask you that. I just –" A strangled sound escaped him. "I wanted –"

"You wanted to find him," the woman finished for him, as though she had read his mind. "Why?"

The sudden loss of hope made Aegon honest. "I want my family," he confessed in a soft, almost unsure voice.

The Stark girl – he had yet to determine which one she was – had been studying him with those inscrutable grey eyes of hers for some time, but upon hearing him speak, something within her shifted. Aegon saw it in the miniscule movement of her jaw, the downward sweep of her eyelashes, and the sudden softening of her features. Even her direwolf companion seemed suddenly docile, somehow. Whatever test it was she had been conducting without his knowledge, Aegon must've passed it.

"Believe it or not," she told him, "I know exactly how you feel."

Aegon did not doubt it. He lowered his eyes and whispered, "I am sorry, that Jon is gone. From what the stories say, he sounded like a great man."

"He was the best," the girl agreed firmly, leaving no room for argument.

"I suppose it was foolish of me to hope that he'd survive a second death," Aegon admitted with a sigh. "I should've gone directly to King's Landing instead of taking a detour this far North, but I kept thinking… if I could only meet him, see his face just once, then perhaps I'd know. Perhaps I'd recognize some part of myself in him. Then maybe …" I wouldn't feel so alone.

The woman with the direwolf looked at him as though he'd spoken those last private thoughts out loud. She bit her lip thoughtfully. And for a long time she did nothing. But then, as though a decision had been made, she crossed the room in great strides, her pet beast trailing behind her, until she was almost at the door to the tower. Only then did she look over her shoulder. "Come with me."

Aegon stared back at her, confused. "Where?"

"You wanted to know what Jon was like? Well, alright. I'll tell you all about him on the way to Winterfell," she replied with a nonchalance that astounded Aegon. She glanced at him once and held the door open, like she just knew that he wouldn't be able to resist following her. When he joined her at the threshold a heartbeat later, he was rewarded with a flash of white teeth.

"The name's Arya Stark, by the way."

* * *

"Lady Stark, I admit that I am still a little… confused. Why are we going to Winterfell?"

Arya made an impatient sound that Aegon wisely interpreted as a warning that he ought to shut his mouth and stop asking her so many questions. Already, she could feel herself transforming. She felt it in the brusque way she saddled her mare and led it out of the stables, in the way she impatiently flicked her hair out of her eyes, and in the way Aegon's steps had slowed to match hers. She was no longer the ice maiden she pretended she was, and she felt rather than saw the way his violet eyes silently appraised her, as though he could chip away bits of her soul until parts of her true self were revealed to him – Arya, mistress of lies and queen of wolves; Arya, beloved sister and loyal friend; Arya, cold fire made flesh.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and simply said, "I told you to call me Arya."

"Arya, then." The prince – king, Arya quickly corrected herself - fastened his cloak and paused briefly to count the number of saddlebags he'd loaded to his horse. He was stalling, Arya could tell. "What will we do in Winterfell?"

"Let's see. I am going there because, contrary to what you may think, I don't actually belong here at the Wall. Winterfell is my home and we're still in the process of rebuilding. My brothers and my sister would not want me gone for long. As for you," she spared him another passing glance, "I haven't decided whether to allow you into my home yet."

The comical expression on the Targaryen's face almost made her laugh. But though she had formed a rough judgment of his character from her earlier conversation with him at the Tower, she wasn't sure yet whether her laugh was something that could one day serve as a vulnerability. It was too early yet to tell.

"You want me to travel with you, alone, without the company of my men and with no assurances as to the kind of welcome I would receive once we made it all the way to Winterfell, and expect me to be alright with it?"

Arya shrugged, a tactic sure to grate on the nerves of enemies and friends alike. She watched Aegon Targaryen grit his teeth and swallow whatever foul words he wanted to say out loud and made note of that. Well, then. At least no one could tell this would-be king that he had no self-control.

"You want me to trust you well enough to tell you stories about my brother. The choice is simple then. My trust for your trust." Arya held his gaze. She watched him struggle with himself for a choice that must not have been easy. Finally, after a few moments of terse silence, he nodded.

Arya held her hand out for him to shake. When his steady fingers gripped hers, she felt some of the tension leak out of him.

"Good. Don't worry, you'll like traveling me with me, Aegon of House Targaryen."

* * *

She was proven right several hours later, when, far from the rising walls of Castle Black and safe from the harsh winds of winter battering them from the confines of their makeshift camp, Nymeria came loping in front of them with something furry in her mouth.

Arya, heedless of the blood on the wolf's muzzle, outstretched one pale, ungloved hand and petted Nymeria behind the ears with a gentleness that must not have escaped Aegon's notice. He blinked at her, visibly startled.

"I hope you like rabbit," Arya said, more in an effort to distract him than to start an actual conversation.

"I've had worse," Aegon replied with an easy smile. His eyes tracked her movements in the camp, watched as she bent her head and her deft fingers made quick work of the rabbit's fur, saw the way blood bloomed and stained her fingers cherry red. The blade in her palm glinted menacingly in the moonlight, and yet strangely enough, the smile on his face did not waver.

"May I ask you a question?" he whispered after the smell of roasted meat had filled the air.

"You may."

"How did you know we were at Castle Black? We told no one of our plans to go there. We were careful not to be seen. The men of the Night's Watch couldn't have sent you a raven in time. I've been trying to think of a logical explanation for your presence there, but nothing makes sense. Was it a coincidence that you were there, Lady – I mean – Arya?"

Arya chewed thoughtfully with her meat before answering him. "I'm not sure what to tell you," she replied, and in a way, it was true. If Bran were here, she knew precisely what he would say. The trees have eyes, he would have said. But she is not Bran, and the person seated before her was a stranger. She could tell that he worshipped different things. Arya's old gods held no power over him. As such, he was less likely to believe her. Arya told herself she didn't want to bother with the effort of making him understand. It worked, for the most part.

"So it wasn't a coincidence?" Something about the way she answered him must have tipped him off. He was smart, this king. Arya wasn't sure whether that was a good thing.

"No, it was not."

Aegon flashed her that same easy smile as before. Arya wished she wouldn't see such naked display of trust on her behalf, despite her earlier claims that she wanted him to trust her. She wasn't sure Westeros could afford to have such an openhearted fellow for a king. But then again, Joffrey, the Mad King, and yes, even Robert Baratheon with his Targaryen-hating ways had been cruel, and look where that had gotten them. The memory of war haunted her still. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the familiar taste of blood in her mouth.

"Arya." He spoke her name as though it was a question.

Arya gave him her full attention.

"My trusted knight told me I was insane for agreeing to this. I was chasing a ghost story, he said. I needed to go south to reclaim my throne. The longer I delay, the harder it will be for me to recapture it. And what of my life? Duck asked me. Did I not care for my life? Winter could claim me. Or I could pass out from exhaustion or die of hunger or perhaps you would… Well, I'd rather not say what Duck thought you'd do." He shot her a teasing smile that wasn't quite enough to hide the way his serious eyes glimmered in the firelight.

Arya knew what he was going to ask before he even opened his mouth. She wished he weren't so open and brave and likeable. She wished he hadn't offered her first watch or tried to tell jokes while they were building a fire or tried so hard to remember not to call her "Lady Stark". She wished he'd acted more like a mad Targaryen. It would have certainly made things easier.

But then again, she'd wished the same thing about Dany once and had been proven wrong about it. When they'd first met and she'd carelessly called her father "the Usurper's Dog", Arya had made up her mind that she would hate her. But in the end, she found out that she could not. The khaleesi was too much like her. A part of her was scared to find out if Aegon was the same.

But how could he be? Arya fought the urge to tell him about a story the Dragon Queen once shared with her and Jon. Dany had spoken about bastards and black dragons and a prophecy – the image of a cloth dragon swaying on poles amongst a cheering crowd. She had piled away the information the way the servants of the Many-Faced God had taught her, but it was only when she learned about Aegon Targaryen's existence that she finally understood.

So the moment Bran told her about his vision, she had ridden further North in an effort to see this dragon pretender for herself. One way or another, she would decide whether Westeros needed a Targaryen king or not.

But then he had asked her about Jon and the hope and longing on his face had been almost too much to bear. Arya took no pleasure in his innocence. He had been longing for a brother, a simple red string that would tie him home, but how could Arya – Arya who had once been no one, lost and troubled by wolf dreams in a city so far away from home – be the one to shatter that dream? The truth was an ugly thing, if presented that way, and she wasn't sure if she could bear being the one responsible for telling it. Once, Arya had known what it felt like to lose her identity. She remembered the unexpected pain of it, the knowledge that if she died no one would mourn her because no one had truly known who she was, and the sense of hopelessness that came with it. Looking back, it had seemed like a slow kind of torture. She did not want to see someone suffer that way.

In the end, she decided she would not tell him.

"Arya." There it was again, her name on his lips. She did not want to get used to the sound of it. She met his gaze unflinchingly and braced herself for his next question.

"Do you think me insane, for placing my trust in the hands of a stranger?" he asked her.

Arya smiled. Something about the act felt freeing. "No," she answered him.

She could have stopped there. Instead, she told him about Jon.

* * *

The following day, she showed him Needle.

She did not know what possessed her to do it, or perhaps she did know and the sweetness was in the act of pretending that she knew nothing. She had mastered the art of lying to others, but she could never lie to herself. Not for long. In her heart of hearts, she knew that Needle represented Jon. Needle was Jon, in a way. And sometimes looking at it made her sad.

But she had already unwrapped Needle from its hiding place – for she was finally old enough to outgrow such a small sword, though the thought of it made her equally as sad – and Aegon had reached for the blade before Arya could tell him that she had changed her mind. She watched his hand close around the hilt, his eyes caressing the blade as though he knew, without him being told, how valuable the thing was to Arya. She watched Aegon tilt his head back, heady with the knowledge of Arya's new secret, and saw Needle as if with his own eyes.

"This is a fine blade. You've taken good care of it," Aegon remarked, testing the weight of it in his hand.

"As should I. It was a present from Jon," she confessed, willing her voice not to shake as the memory of Jon's last day in Winterfell came back to her.

Slowly, she relieved the memory out loud until she felt like a girl of eight again. She felt the ghost of Jon's arms around her, the strength of his embrace, the way they'd both laughed when they finished each other's sentences and said, "Don't tell Sansa". The memory warmed her and as she told the story, her voice grew stronger. Aegon listened to it all with a smile on his face.

"His gift saved you," he pointed out.

Arya nodded. "It did."

Aegon gave her back Needle, and Arya did not miss the gentle way he held it out to her. "Thank you for telling me that story," he said softly.

Arya did not answer. She stared at the familiar blade in her hands and was surprised to find out that the sight of it no longer made her sad.

* * *

The first time she heard Aegon sing, she felt her breath catch in her throat. They were walking alongside each other in one of the rare moments when it wasn't snowing hard enough to force them to make camp early, when all of a sudden he started humming. At first it was just a few notes, rising and falling in time to the beat of his footsteps as he drudgingly made his way across the ankle-deep snow, but after a while his voice grew bolder.

Arya stared at him. He was _good_. She wasn't sure why she was surprised (after all, he was constantly finding ways to prove to her that he was a Targaryen in everything but name), but the discovery pleased her all the same.

If Arya was anything at all like her Aunt Lyanna, she would have wept. Perhaps Sansa would've. But Arya wasn't the type to be swayed by music.

"Have I mentioned how unfair it is that your voice is so pretty?" she told Aegon grumpily instead, which was the closest thing to a compliment she could give him.

Aegon bit back a grin. "Do I detect a hint of jealousy in my lady's voice?" he teased her.

Arya rolled her eyes. "Can you blame me? I was raised with the knowledge that my septa would sooner marry than hear me sing a beautiful note in my lifetime."

"Oh, come now. Surely you jest. You can't be that bad."

"You only say that because you've never heard me sing."

"So sing."

It felt like a challenge. But the only tune that came to mind was that stupid song Tom of Sevenstrings had sung to her once upon a time, the one about featherbeds and binding your hair with stupid grass, and that wasn't something she cared to remember. It only made her sad, and as Arya was slowly beginning to realize, she was tired of constantly feeling that way.

So instead, she told him about Sansa and the many ways she could make a grown man weep with her voice. It was the first time she'd ever volunteered information about anyone who wasn't Jon, and if that had the desired effect of shutting Aegon up and making him trust her, then that was fine with her. After having made the decision that she would not stand in Aegon's way when the time came for him to reclaim his throne, she needed him to think that he could trust her. Or so she kept telling herself.

* * *

"You shouldn't curse like that."

Aegon flushed, deeply embarrassed, and it was that embarrassment that saved Arya from hearing the rest of his words. It was their seventh night of traveling together, and despite the warmth of the fire and the thick fur coat wrapped around his shoulders, Aegon felt cold. He was so afraid he'd freeze to death that he had taken to rubbing his fingers together in an effort to warm the blood in his veins. That, and cursing out loud in High Valyrian.

It mortified him to know that he had uttered such filthy words in front of a lady, but how was he to know that Lady Arya could speak Valyrian? It was practically a dead language, and he had been told that few nobles in Westeros had the patience to study it. He wondered how someone like her had come to know the language. Did she merely understand the words, or could she actually speak them well?

"Forgive me," Aegon told her, switching back to Westerosi.

If anything, Arya Stark looked amused. "It's alright. I've heard worse." This was said in perfect Valyrian, with barely a trace of an accent.

I suppose that answers my question, Aegon thought to himself. He studied the Northern girl in front of him. As always, she was flanked by her direwolf, who had taken to nuzzling Aegon's hand whenever they were about to share a meal. He did not know how he had suddenly found himself in the wolf's good graces, but suspected her mistress' attitude had something to do with it.

It was fascinating, to see Arya slowly unraveling before him. He wasn't sure if she was aware of doing it, exactly, but there was a softness in her whenever she talked about Jon Snow, and sometimes Aegon could see glimpses of the girl she used to be. At first, he used to wonder if he could find Jon in her smile, and so he had taken it upon himself to make her facial muscles form just so – little jokes here and there, a clever pun when she was least expecting it – and before he knew it, that flash of white on her face became something he looked forward to every day. Aegon had always been a simple boy.

Arya raised her eyebrows at him, a response to Aegon's quiet observation. "Are you curious as to why someone like me is fluent in Valryian? Or are you wondering why I finally revealed that information to you?" she asked him.

Aegon sent her a look. "Must you suspect everyone of having an ulterior motive? Perhaps I was just wondering if you spoke other languages," he responded.

"I do," Arya told him in a tone that suggested that she was not lying. Aegon suddenly became aware of the weight of her stare. It pinned him, made him look at his hands instead of her face, and for a moment, he felt the very air shift around him. "I can speak other languages, King Aegon. Romance is not one of them."

Aegon prayed to the Seven that Arya would not see the red spots on his cheeks. So she had seen him looking at her.

"Pity," he muttered, summoning that quick, charming smile that sometimes caught her off guard. In that moment, he willed it to be a shield. "I've been told that I'd make an excellent tutor."

Arya stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Get some sleep," she said gruffly before quickly disappearing inside her own tent.

The imprint of her hand warmed him long after she left.

* * *

Halfway towards their journey, they stumbled upon a group of wildlings. Or rather, the wildlings stumbled upon them.

It had been Aegon's turn to watch camp that night, but the blazing heat from the fire and the heavy weight of the wine on his stomach – a parting gift from Duck that he'd finally had the foresight to dispose of – had slowly lulled him to sleep. He'd fallen asleep with his mouth hanging open, dreaming about flames and open skies and the ever-shifting color of a girl's grey eyes. The next thing he knew, there were shouts piercing the night air and what sounded like a scuffle going on inside Arya's tent. Soon, Arya herself emerged outside, blades singing, blood welling up from a cut on her cheek so that it dripped down her chin in tiny rivulets. For a moment, she looked feral.

But then her eyes glazed over, and suddenly it was like looking at a ghost. She twisted her body to the left, narrowly avoiding getting gutted in the stomach by a wandering pickaxe, and when the wildling thief paused long enough to reach for the second blade strapped to his back, she lunged for him and slit his neck before Aegon could even bother drawing his own sword.

Aegon stood with his feet planted on the ground, watching her with wide eyes. He'd always thought that the act of killing was a brutal thing, sheltered as he had been in the Free Cities for all these years, but seeing Arya doing it now was enough to make him change his mind. Somehow, she made the whole thing look graceful. Her movements were lithe and measured, her body a weapon. It would have been beautiful, had it not been for her eyes. They looked empty, erased of all emotion and reason. And somehow, that was scarier than the image of Arya stabbing another wildling in the chest, her lips pulled back into a snarl.

He called her name once, twice, thrice. She did not respond.

"Arya, please," he cried out, his voice hoarse and filled with a desperation he did not know he possessed.

A crack appeared on her blank face. "Arya," she whispered, rolling the name off her tongue as though it was something foreign. Her eyebrows furrowed. "Yes, I suppose that is my name."

She blinked and saw, as if for the first time, the trail of bodies lying at her feet. There was blood everywhere – on the snow, on her boots, on her face. The weight of it felt familiar.

Aegon watched her go with a heavy heart, wondering how someone who shined as brightly as her could forget something as simple as her own name.

* * *

"What happened to you during the war?"

The question had been burning on Aegon's tongue for days, fueled by the cold, almost methodical manner by which Arya had started acting in the wake of the wildlings' sudden attack on their camp. He had tried to hold this conversation off for as long as he could, respecting Arya's need for space after suffering through what appeared to be events that had triggered something deep in her mind – some long ago buried memory perhaps that had extinguished the fire in her eyes and brought that sad tilt to her mouth – but after days of awkward, heavy silence punctuated by Arya staring at the raven that had suddenly taken to following them at a distance, he couldn't take it anymore. He wanted – no, needed – to put the smile back on Arya's face.

Aegon was aware that he was treading on dangerous waters, but what he wasn't expecting was for Arya to actually answer him.

"I grew up," she told him simply.

An odd lump formed in his throat. For the first time in days, she was finally looking at him again.

"I'm sorry," Aegon whispered. He was seized by a sudden impulse to hold her hand, to trace the battle scars that he would surely find there with his fingertips and press open-mouthed kisses to her knuckles, but that – that was not allowed.

Hearing him say those words stirred something in Arya's chest, so much so that she ended up glaring at him all the way across the wide-open space between them. Aegon took that as a good sign that Arya was slowly coming back to herself. "Sorry?" she snapped. "What could you possibly be sorry for? You weren't there."

"No, I wasn't," Aegon replied slowly. "But if you think that I know nothing about war, then you have sorely misjudged me, my lady. My family was killed, my inheritance ripped from me. I had to grow up knowing that the men responsible for my family's death were still alive. Arya, I know what it's like to have ghosts living inside my own head." An image of Jon Connington's ashen face flashed before his mind. His broken form at the top of the tower at Storm's End, the way the greyscale slowly consumed his skin until there was almost nothing left of him.

"If that's true, then how do you do it?" Arya asked him, her expression plaintive. "How do you make the ghosts go away?"

"You can't. But you can choose not to be haunted by them."

Arya held his gaze. She wanted to believe him. If everything was just a matter of choice, then she would choose to believe him.

She gave an almost imperceptible nod in his direction.

For the remainder of the day, they were no more talks of ghosts and wars.

* * *

"Shall we stock up more on these supplies?"

Arya shook her head at him, prompting him to drop the stack of firewood to the ground. "There's no need for that. We'll reach Winterfell within the hour," she announced.

The knowledge made Aegon's heart stutter. It should have been a relief, knowing that this fool's journey was finally coming to an end, but if that was true, then why did it feel as though someone had just stuck a knife in between his ribs and left it there? He felt raw. Exposed. Bled dry.

He forced a smile on his face despite the fact that parting ways with pale-faced, sullen Arya Stark made it physically hard for him to breathe and said instead, "Good. I was beginning to get tired of the cold anyway."

But he had never been a good liar and Arya had always been good at tearing up lies, so when she wisely ignored his comment and shouldered on, no one was more surprised than him.

"Have you decided what you will do to me, once we reach your home?" He was almost afraid to ask her, but the sensible part of him was aware that he needed to know.

The expression on Arya's face gave nothing away. "I have," she responded, grey eyes gleaming in the sunlight. "You have an hour to change my mind."

If Aegon had his way, he would change more than just her mind. But he was no longer a boy of one and ten. He knew that such foolish dreams could no longer be permitted to take root in his mind. There was no such thing as hope anymore, not with Jon Snow dead and Arya Stark about to go home.

In the end, Aegon's life would go back to the way it was. Empty.

Perhaps there is no escaping the cold after all.

* * *

That morning, she dreamed of Jon. He was lying beside her in the cold, fingers intertwined with hers, and there were snowflakes trapped between his eyelashes and tangled in his hair, but his grey eyes were warm and Arya could feel his pulse hammering steadily against hers, completely in sync with her in a way no one else's ever had. In that moment, Jon had never looked so alive.

"I miss you," she whispered against the fierce howling of the wind.

Jon tightened his grip on her fingers. "As do I," he said. Hearing him speak, Arya almost felt like crying. She never realized how much she needed Jon until he was gone, never realized how much her heart ached every time someone mentioned his name. And even though she finally had Bran and Sansa and Rickon back again, Winterfell was not the same without him. Without Jon, home was not… home.

"I wish you hadn't left me." She tilted her head to the side so she was facing him and watched the way his warm breath turned into puffs of smoke against the cool air. She could not stop looking at him, even if she wanted to.

"I'm sorry I couldn't make it." Jon held her gaze. "But I'm not sorry you did. If anyone could survive through winter, of course it would be you."

Arya laughed, her throat laced with something bitter. "I don't feel so strong though. Not all the time. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel so scared and lost, and – I've fought so hard to remember who I am, but sometimes I feel like I'm just right back where I started," she confessed.

Jon reached for her and held her close. "You're Arya Stark and you're my little sister. That's who you are," he told her with conviction. "Never forget that."

"Even though Father was secretly your uncle?"

"Even though Father was secretly my uncle," he agreed.

Arya rested her head on the crook of his shoulder. It felt like a missing piece of a puzzle finally slotting back into place. It felt like home. "You would've made such a great king," she told him wistfully.

"Aegon would too."

The mention of his name startled Arya back into the present. Somehow, it made her aware that she was only dreaming. "You know he's not really Aegon, don't you?"

"Yes," Jon said. "But no one needs to know that. Perhaps if Westeros had cared less about bloodlines, we wouldn't have had such horrible rulers in the past."

"It is stupid," Arya agreed, thinking about Joffrey and the Mad King and everyone else who fell short of being a good king. "You want me to acknowledge him then?"

Jon smiled at her. "I'm not here to tell you what to do."

"That sounds a lot like you telling me what to do," Arya complained, though she could not help but smile back.

"I trust you to do what is right, little sister."

Jon's face started to blur, and though she tried to hold on as much as she could to the moment, it felt as though time was quickly slipping away. Jon mussed her hair one last time and whispered in her ear, soft and loving in a way only Jon could manage, "And now it's time to wake up."

* * *

Winterfell was a sight to behold. There was something beautiful about rebuilding something out of the ashes, making every stone, every brick and every piece of wood gleam like polished treasures, the new merging with the past until there was nothing left but one giant fortress. The structure screamed strength. It said, The Starks are here to stay.

"Welcome to Winterfell." Arya sat tall and proud on her saddle, for once looking like she truly belonged somewhere. It nearly distracted him from the fact that Winterfell's gates were wide open.

"Is that an invitation?" Aegon asked, barely believing himself.

"Yes, of course, stupid," Arya responded with a laugh. He liked her like this, throat bared and head thrown back, a wild creature lazing around in the sunlight. He wished every moment they had was like this.

"Can you swear on your honor as a lady that I will enter through those gates without getting devoured by your siblings' wolves?"

She gave him a look, one that pierced right through skin and bone and all the way into his soul. "You've trusted me so far, Your Grace. Why stop now?"

"That's true," he mused.

Aegon knew he was taking another risk. Just because he'd befriended her on the journey here did not mean she necessarily had his best interests at heart. The invitation to Winterfell could very well be a trap, for all he knew. And what exactly was he trying to accomplish here? He hardly expected that the Starks would bend the knee, not after Robb Stark died and all the Northern lords crowned Jon Snow as King in the North in his place. He had no dragons, no Unsullied, and no Dothraki warriors. All he had was his birthright, a big heart, and his dream of making the world a better place, and that still probably wasn't enough. The best that he could possibly hope for was an alliance with the North, the Seven be willing.

Aegon took a deep breath, courage in his veins, and stepped through the gates.

* * *

 **AN:** Can you tell I'm having some major Jon/Arya sibling feels? Yeah, I'm never gonna be over them.

If I were the type of person who's aggressively into making New Year's resolutions, I'd definitely aim to write more stuff this year, but given the nature of my work, that would be way too optimistic, even for me lol. But yeah, I def see another fic coming. Wait for it :)


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